Tag Archives: scriptures

Forty Days of Praying the Word of God: Day 25

“Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like You in heaven above or on earth below—You who keep Your covenant of love with Your servants who continue wholeheartedly in Your way.”

1 Kings 8:23

Father, You alone are God and there is no other. I thank You that You are a God of covenant, a God of love, who keeps His covenant with His people.

Lord, make us a whole hearted people! I pray that Your Spirit will be poured out on Your church, healing our divisive ways, healing our complacency. Call us up higher than we are, Lord. I pray You would heal our half heartedness, our divided hearts toward You. I pray that You will call for an end to unholy alliances, unholy friendships, unholy truces, and that You would call us once again to walk as the sanctified, holy, called out people of God.

I pray that all other ways but Your ways would quickly become dead ends for us. May we come back into alignment with Your footsteps, Jesus, and follow only after You.

In Your jealousy for us Lord, would You rise up and contend with the one who contends for the affections and the wholeheartedness of Your people. May You be our first and only love, may ours eyes become fixed on You alone, and may we find our delight in following only after You.

Heal our hearts, Lord, and make them wholly Yours.

In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen.

genesis 14: rescue

Sat with this chapter for a long time, letting hard to pronounce names wash over me. I wanted to see God, so I sat and read and waited.

Four kings went against five kings and four kings won. They took everything, including Lot and all of his possessions.

Lot had chosen to pitch his tent in Sodom. Bad choice, it turns out. I’m sure he didn’t know the wickedness that went on there. At first. But what about when he did know, and he still chose to stay?

Sometimes, we stay where we are long after we should have left.

I kept reading, searching for the heart of my King. I think it’s right here:

“When Abram heard that his relative had been taken prisoner, he assembled his 318 trained men, born in his household, and they went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he and his servants deployed against them by night, attacked them, and pursued them as far as Hobah to the north of Damascus. He brought back all the goods and also his relative Lot and his goods, as well as the women and the other people.”

Lot had been taken captive. Didn’t matter why. Didn’t matter if it was partly his fault. He was a captive, and Abram went to set him free and bring him back. Because Lot belonged to the family of Abram.

And Abram’s heart is not kinder than God’s.

Maybe you need to hear that today. To remember that no man’s compassion and mercy and love and willingness to come after you is greater than God’s. I don’t know what foolish choices you have made, or how those choices may have led you into captivity, but I do know this:  If you are His child, He has in no way abandoned you to that captivity. His heart toward you is loving and full of compassion, and He will come for you in your captivity.

The Bible, with all of it’s hard to pronounce names and places and all the details that fascinate and confuse and make us ponder, is ultimately the story of rescue. Of the people held captive, and the Rescuer who came for them, no matter what.

Matthew—Your Father

Matthew 6:1-18

At first glance, that mountainside sermon is exactly what so many expect of God. A list of do’s and do not’s. But I’ve sat here listening on repeat for days, hearing the same phrase over and over.

your Father. Ten times in eighteen verses He uses these words (once He says our Father, but still). Ten times He looks at me and says your Father.

It is said that when scripture repeats something three times, it is emphasizing the importance of something…a place, a person, a theme. It is basically saying, pay attention, this is crucial.

Ten times in eighteen verses Jesus affirms my identity as a daughter of heaven. 

I’ve been sitting on this one thing and counting the repeats and feeling the weight of pay attention, this is crucial.

I have called Him Father for years. But Father is just one of many identities I have called Him, depending on my circumstance. For instance, if you were to intrude on my most personal moments with Him lately, you would hear me crying out to my Healer. Not all that long ago He was my Deliverer. On a regular basis He is my Provider. The list goes on and the list is not wrong it’s just that He doesn’t want to be on a list.

Knowing God by a list of the things He can do for me is not the relationship He fought to the death to have with me.

The list separates what God does from the reason He does them.

[ Simplistic example:  When my kids got hungry, they didn’t call out for the food provider. When they got hurt they didn’t run to the owie healer. It was always Mom. I fed them, helped their hurts, and gave them what they needed because I was their mom, and they knew that, at least on some level.]

molasses

And finally, something in me settles as revelation seeps in like molasses.

What He does cannot be separated from the reason He does them because the reason He does them is who He is.

your Father.

God is not insisting that I know and believe and declare that He is my Healer.

your Father.

Or that I have memorized and can recite and are standing on all of the verses that prove He is my Healer.

your Father.

Or that I make sure to let Him know that my hope is not in doctors, lest He think I am trusting in some other healer besides Him.

your Father.

or any of the other things that we do and have others do in our attempt to get Him to do what we need Him to do.

your Father.

Molasses is slow, but eventually it gets where it’s going.

His Father-heart is not in question. Jesus, with His ten times in eighteen verses, has made it a much more personal question.

Do I have the heart of a daughter?

tap-dancing

Or is it still the heart of an orphan? A beggar. A tap dancer performer scripture-reciter trying to get the attention of the Healer Provider Deliverer?

Is my heart still so starved that it clamors for what He does more than for who He is?

And this one. So hard to answer. This is the pay attention. This is the crucial. I know this is why Jesus looked at me when He said it ten times.

Will I trust my Father even if Healer is nowhere to be found?

But still, revelation molasses just keeps seeping in until it finds the place it has been after from the beginning of the ten times in eighteen verses.

Is your Father enough?

And I remember that time He asked if His love was enough. It wasn’t a theological debate question, it was simple. Yes, or no. Designed not to be cruel or accusatory, but to force my heart into a life changing decision. And it was. It was life changing to choose to let His love be enough for me. It stopped my fighting and scratching for any other love. It brought rest to my soul. His love became the prize, not the consolation.

close up of a beautiful young woman looking upwards

So in the dark hours of the night, my heart again made a choice.

You are my Father and I am Your daughter.

Yes, it is enough. 

2:00 a.m. and my heart is full

My little office/prayer room. Couch, cozy blanket. Candles burning, filling the room with the smell of cinnamon. Bibles, books and journals spilled out onto the couch.

(All Sons and Daughters are singing Called Me Higher. Makes me close my eyes and sway to the sound.)

My bible is next to me, a worn but comfortable friend. I begin to randomly turn pages, feeling His breath rising up from the words.  I breathe it in deep and my thoughts respond.

“And God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”   Profound power. This “Let there be” that is obeyed every time…it makes me crave Your voice over my life.

“He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; He seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor”  You don’t push down, You raise up. I want to be like You.

“…You are the ruler of all things. In Your hands are strength and power…”  All things. All. Things. And the hands that hold me and mine and all things, they are strong, powerful hands.

(And now Jason Upton is singing You Are Holy and I have to stop.)

“This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last;  apart from me there is no God. Who then is like Me? Let him proclaim it.”  The silence is deafening. You stand alone in Your God-ness. You came first, You will be last, with none in-between. I bow right here, in the silence of no other god.

“The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”  Such a scandalous love, and You don’t hide it.  It is overwhelming. Unearthly. Heavenly.

“Come to Me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”  The invitation to rest. I’m so glad that You know that the world I live in continually calls me to “do more, go farther, be better”. You know the weight of the yoke I am prone to come under; the one that has “Not enough” written all over it. I love that You know. And You invite me to You. To rest. If I will just come.

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”  Rich grace. Poured out, not measured. I am over my head deep in this grace. I want to live it, give it to others, let it be the lens that I look through. I don’t want to keep looking at the world through squinty, judging eyes behind the closed door of my life. I want to open them all wide.  Teach me grace.

It’s 2:00 a.m. and I am finally tired.

(Fittingly, Jason Upton sang one final song…)

..to end my time of breathing in His breath, surrounded by the warmth of candles, Presence, and the scent of cinnamon. My heart is full, having discovered again that His heart is good.

Genesis 1:3    1Samuel 2:8   1Chronicles 29:12   Isaiah 44:6-7   Hosea 3:1   Matthew 11:28   1Corinthians 1:8-9